Already did, a few posts up. Obviously, it depends on what you're running..what if you're running a server? In my own case, a dell with one gig, a swap file just allowed me to watch an hour long webcast. Without out, the computer freezes in about 10 minutes...requiring a reboot. The video stalled out a few times, but the sound kept going and it restored itself. Swap will restore otherwise lost data.

have you investigated the possibility that someone somewhere in your community is throwing out an old computer that is newer and better equipped.

Its a bad personality trait of mine that I can't stand throwing something out if I can modify it to do something useful. Throwing out an old laptop just so I could replace it with a newer one would be like losing a bit of my soul. I just KNOW that there must be some good purpose I can use my old laptops for. (one is destined to be a home fileserver and I will never give up the search to do something useful with the others...)

Quote:

If you have some problems finding old PUPs for the 192MB PC you have, let me know and I will send you several of the older ISO of older PUPs which were designed for your PC.

Thanks for that. I have seen a list that I think Catdude put together of older pups, and I am gradually trialling some of them. I'm quite taken by how capable some of them are - although I find there is enormous variation between how well each performs on my various Toshiba lappys. Many just wont load at all. It is my long term goal to make/build/tailor/find the right pup, the right xorg, and the right apps for each machine so that each one serves some good purpose.

I might even strip the guts out of one and refill it with newer internals - a model T Ford with Lamborghini drivetrain

Thanks for the suggestion about trying larger memory modules - I will push the boundaries and see what I come up with.

And of course no one is suggesting a PC with less than 2GB doesn`t need a swap.
This is all depending on use ( of course...).
Average home browsers can do with less, power users and office suites need more.
I`d say run what you usually use, and if there`s 1GB+ ram free, then no swap.

puppyluvr; A normal swap`s about 2x the ram size, you could also use 2GB.

Except in my case where I have very little ram, so bigger swap.
I`m writing this on an old Celeron with 500MB of ram with a 2GB swap.

### A ram usage meter in the tray would obviously be a big help.
......... Then as apps. are opened you could keep track of free space.
.

Hello,
First, thank you Ttuuxxx, I shall certainly try.
I am glad to see you, I was afraid 'life' was gonna take you from us.
The 'real world' can be so demanding, and has no GUI.

I have always thought the recommendation was 1/2 your actual ram for swap, but that could be outdated..
But I was not making a point, I was proposing a question.
Considering all the above, does a newer 2+gb ram machine, for the average user, really need a swap? It it becoming a 'Wary' sort of thing, for <1gb machines, or does the swap still serve a valuable purpose..
My machine, with 2gb, seems to never touch the swap, but I can peg the 2.16ghz processor much too easily.....
But power increases in the order of magnitudes about every year..
So I just wondered if it is about to go the way of the cassette 'drive'..._________________Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
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Hello,
To drift back OT..
In the last 5 years, I have "wasted" a lot of time on Puppy Linux..
It has effected 'real life' as much as 'real life' has effected my time for it...
I look at how Puppy has impacted me...
Then I look at how I have impacted Puppy..
I`m a hack..
Coding, for my dyslexic brain, it taxing beyond belief, but then so is texting.....
But I can look at Puppy, and see things, things that started out as my attempts at contributing, and became the pet projects, if not outright obsessions, of those with more time, and often more skill, than I can offer..
I mean really, 1/4 of a million people have D/L an Opera skin called Puppy Blues, that clearly says..
For Puppy Linux Users.
That blows my mind....
My point, I guess, is that everyone can contribute, everyone can have an impact, because although your execution may not be perfect, your idea may turn out to be useful... What you dream up, others might make real...
As I said, It takes a village...
I take the GPL seriously, so anything I do, I not only consent, but hope, that others will take, use, improve, share....
But for Puppy itself......we still need a sandbox......
Somewhere that ideas can be explored, beyond 'credit' and personal claim, where we can all present options, ideas, skilled suggestions..
I can make something interesting, he can make something interesting, she can make something interesting..
But together WE can make something AMAZING...
That is how, after 5 years, I see the GPL, Linux, and Puppy..._________________Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
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Hello,
Dewbie, that is really interesting.. I have a lot of older Pups, and will definitely check that out.
Wonder why that would be...
Maybe a kernel thing..._________________Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
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Puppy has had several differing memory models at play over its play. Linux has made changes and those have been cascaded in the differing distros in Puppyland.

I run Live media (meaning: all system/subsytem operations start and end on the booted CD/DVD) for most of my "production" Puppy use. I call it "production" when I find a distro which provides all that I need-use and it is stable. So for example, I have 3 PCs and 1 laptop that are always on and almost never rebooted.

This is done by selecting, then testing a distro of interest. When I find it matches need, I add all of the subsystems needed. Then, I will save-session changes to DVD and reboot. Once all desktop customization is completed, I will make a "final" reboot saving session and the machine usually runs for many months.

I have seen RAM usages differences, say, with FATDOG5.2 versus newest FATDOG6.11. I have seen this in other PUPs as well; see here.. In that thread, I shared RAM use findings regarding both Slacko and Exprimo.

For me, my best behavior has been derived from looking at the Unix/Linux info I could find on the web about Linux task model, its scheduler, and its I/O and memory management. It gave me a level of understanding its makeup and structure. But, I have also come to understand that RAM use is NOT consistent across PUPs, suggesting that there are various things in a distro's design that will be usefully brought into play.

Puppy is intriguing for several reason. And, over the past 4 years there have been several changes which affect RAM needs for operation.

Without getting into a very lengthy discussion on what all this means, I reduce it down to taking the advice and approach that has been shared by the many Unix/Linux sessions I have attended over the years. And, since being a member in Puppyland, I have found that on more than 1 occasion, that the advice to have a physical swap has been useful even on my 4GB PCs. I've seen this in Puppy reports and via some select terminal commands.

Even though some may differ with my observations, I have NOT seen any loss of performance because any system I've run has a swap file. I take this, ALSO, to mean that it provides observed stability.

Over the years, even though I have not posted, I have noticed changes in RAM use. I believe this is due to both kernel releases, kernel building and packaging.

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3 Different Puppy Search Enginesor use DogPileLast edited by gcmartin on Sat 12 Jan 2013, 15:29; edited 3 times in total

gcmartin; I agree, like hardware there can be vast differences in O.S.s.
The initrdfs and swap are added cpu load, a slow PC will show it.
Sadly the slow older PCs are the ones that are short on ram. Catch-22 !

Running a swap is certainly the safest method of PC operations.
However I`ve done without a swap for years ( with 1 GB or more of ram ).

The effect of running out of ram is sudden and fatal ( a tray meter is good ).
Linux has no warning of low ram that I`ve noticed ( an alert`s easily made ).

Congrads puppyluvr on the 5 great years, hope to see you around for many, many more
ttuuxxx

Seconded (or at least as long as you enjoy it and can spare the time).

Six and a half years of Puppying for me. I was given a secondhand computer (my previous one) in April 2006, and found that in addition to a 15 GB Windows XP partition it also had 5 GB of free space at the back of the drive (just as well, because back then I wouldn't have known how to resize the XP partition).

I put the then latest version of Vector, 5.1, on that space and used it happily for a couple of months until the internet connection mysteriously died (I never found out why).

Having read about Puppy and being keen to try it I downloaded and burnt off a copy of Puppy 2.00 with Seamonkey - you had a choice of browser back then, it was that or Opera - at the local library in June 2006, and for the next three months Puppy was my only way of getting online at home apart from XP, which ran a lot more slowly than Puppy on a machine with only 256 MB of RAM and tended to "bog down".

I tried one or two other Puppies, such as 2.14, but the next ones I was really taken with were PizzaPup 3.01, and then 4.20 / 4.21 and its variants such as TurboPup, in 2008. I think I was hooked from then on ._________________Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.1, Peppermint 10, AntiX 19.2, PCLinuxOS 20.02, Pardus 19.1 XFCE, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

Hello,
No talent involved.. Just the realization....
Boot "pfix=ram" and Puppy is indestructible..
Hack and slay, learn as you destroy, and "assimilate"......
Save the mess, open it later from another Pup, and see where it went wrong..
I cant book learn, I`m a "hands on" guy...
So its like a car.. You learn how it works by fixing it..

Except P.A.W.
That was a lot of work......_________________Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
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